Pathological Response

One of the great things about a 'group' blog is that it facilitates debate which hopefully leads to a more developed understanding of the world at the end. In this spirit I'd like to post a few comments in response to Dan's piece yesterday. In this he posted a link to an article which suggested that politicians, or at least those prominent in the drive to war, are psychopathic. To be fair, Dan doesn't go so far in his post. Instead he cites a definition of what constitutes a psychopath and proceeds from there:

"Psychopaths get what they want by violating social norms and expectations without guilt or regret while their intelligence and social skills enable them to construct a facade of normalcy"

The parallels with not just the Bushes and Blairs of our world, but the job description of the modern politician, are legion.

While I think the idea is an interesting one, I remain unconvinced.

I should probably begin by conceding that my knowledge of "psychopathy" and psychology in general is pretty superficial. This is Dan's area of expertise, not mine. Nonetheless we are not here discussing in depth psychological analysis so much as political motivations, something I'd like to think I know a bit about.

The idea that Bush and (particularly) Blair are psychopathic is hardly a new one. Matthew Parris made similar suggestions about the Prime Minister sometime ago and others have echoed his conclusions. While some of those making the allegations have been psychiatrists or mental health professionals the vast majority have been laymen seeking to use the argument (such as it is) as a reason to oppose the war. An interesting choice as there is hardly a shortage of very good reasons to oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

To suggest that our leaders are mad is, it seems to me, something of a cop-out. If they are insane then it follows that there is no point in engaging with them and that any arguments they advance can be dismissed out of hand. In truth the arguments put in defence of the war do have some merit, although I believe none of them is truly convincing. It is entirely possible for two people to assess the same situation rationally and come to diametrically opposed conclusions. One of the key determinants of the positions people adopt it the values they attribute to different factors (freedom from oppression, peace, self determinations, stability etc.).

It is something of a lefty cliche to quote Noam Chomsky in defence of your argument, but I'm happy with being a cliche and in truth quite lazy, so I direct you to his comments in Hegemony Or Survival (Hamish Hamilton, New York, 2003, p. 4). Discussing the recent National Security Strategy in which American planners declared openly their adoption of preventive wars (often improperly described as "pre-emptive") Chomsky notes,

..their decisions may not be irrational within the framework of prevailing ideology and the institutions that embody it. There is ample historical precedent for the willingness of leaders to threaten or resort to violence in the face of significant risk of catastrophe.

The problems, in short, are institutional.

It is true, of course, that institutions are ultimately made up of individuals. Such individuals will seek to justify their position within institutions and are usually quite good at it. This does not demonstrate that they are mad or in some way disconnected from reality, but simply reflects a perfectly normal human response. We have all done things we know are wrong, even if they are quite trivial and most of us are very good at developing frameworks to justify what we did ("I had to", "it was a good thing in the long run" etc). In this respect our leaders are little different to the rest of us. Their misdemeanors simply have much more serious consequences.

The realisation that our leaders are fundamentally rational, but motivated by very different values to our own is in many ways much scarier than a belief that they are mad. To deal with mad people in power requires only that you remove those people from positions of power, a relatively simple task. Dealing with the question of motivations requires major institutional changes and those will not be easy to bring about.

I'd be interested to hear if Dan - or anyone else - has any opinions or disagrees. Like I said above, debate will hopefully lead to a more developed analysis of the problems we are concerned with.